A long overdue return visit to the Wirral

Isaac is busy revising for exams at school this week (what a fun school holiday for him – not!) so we decided a day out caching might be the perfect break from this. Where to go though as Isaac wanted to cache in the North West, but we’ve already done a lot of the caches in the area?

North Cheshire Way? A sign right by one of the Skeg to Ness caches

A quick scour of cache locations on Memory Map led us to a return trip to the Wirral. We’ve not cached there for just over a year, in which time lots of new caches have come out in the area. There was a time when we’d nearly cleared the Wirral of caches, but not any more :-).

A cow, watching us sign the logbook at a cache

On the way to the Wirral we stopped for a few quick caches around the A41 on the east side of Chester. Nothing too taxing here, apart from a few nettles to contend with and a nano that had lost it’s magnet.

Funny sign in a front garden we passed - "Never mind the dog, beware of the owner!"

Once north of Chester, we opted to finish off the few Skeg To Ness caches (no’s 202-207) we’d left out when we did the rest of the series a few weeks ago. Along the way there were quite a few other caches to find. At Come on Down we bumped into a very new cacher as we were about to walk over to look for the cache. Nice to meet you mpl003 :-).

Isaac with the cache. We finally finish the Skeg to Ness series with #207.

Once we’d finished this set of caches, we were at the lovely village / town of Neston. Here there is a nice trail of caches which go in a loop over fields and back along the sea front, with a further section of the walk along an old railway track that is now a cycleway. Sounds like a perfect excuse to get the bikes out – so we did!

Cycling down the great cycleway round a series at Parkgate

After finding the bonus cache on the last series, we headed off further up the coast to Heswall for a few quick caches. Again, nothing too taxing here – even the cache outside another cacher’s house was out of sight of the house, so we did not get spotted.

Boats on the silted up Dee Estuary at Heswall

You can’t come to the Wirral without doing some PhilPamAndRob caches – especially their excellent “old school” puzzle caches in which nothing is ever quite as simple as it first seems. We’d not done any of their caches yet today, but there was a group of them nearby at Royden Park. Off we set…

Lovely old stile on the way to a cache

We got distracted at first by some caches around a circular walk that have been set by some local Cub Scouts. All of these were quick finds with pretty good co-ords and in nice spots.

Looking from GZ towards the Dee Estuary, Irish Sea and Wales (middle left of picture)

Along the way somewhere (I won’t say where and won’t say if we diverted off the route to get it as I don’t want to give anything away) we stopped to finally find PhilPamAndRob’s excellent A “One-Off” cache. We’d actually started this tricky little puzzle on our visit to the area last year and after a further twist sometime earlier in the day today, we had the final co-ords for the cache. The actual cache was a lot easier to find than the puzzle was to solve, but very satisfying nonetheless :-).

Beautiful old church at Thurstaston

Next it was into Royden Park itself for PhilPamAndRob’s Easter themed series. This is a set of 4 Traditional caches, which give you the co-ords to a bonus cache. All were nice quick finds and we soon had the bonus cache in hand. On the way round we stopped off to get their Wirral Advent Calendar puzzle cache.

You can see Royden Hall through the trees on the way round the Easter Egg series

By now, time was getting on but we had 44 finds and wondered if we could get this up to 50. Daft question really as there are tons more caches around here, so off we set…

We love caching in woodland like this - so tranquil

The next two caches were DNF’s – why is it when you need a few more finds, they suddenly get really hard to find? We decided to stop trying so hard, relax and just go with the flow. This normally works really well and we find caches without really thinking about it, whereas if we try too hard we keep DNF’ing caches!

National Trust - Local Nature Reserve. The caches were in woodland adjoining this area.

Needless to say we soon had over 50 caches found for the day, including clearing up 3 DNF’s in the Bidston Hill area from our visit last year. It’s always very satisfying clearing up DNF’s like this :-).

An almost yellow field with hundreds of buttercups

We REALLY must be thinking about going home now as we are getting hungry, but not before 3 last caches just to the south of Chester.

Looking along the Shropshire Union Canal near Chester on the way to the penultimate cache of the day

We ended the day with 56 finds and were back for a late tea, so made pretty good progress throughout the day as we did not start off early. Isaac’s mind was totally off his exams so the main objective of the day was achieved too :-).

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Mum told me this morning you’d been to see why the Sandiways are called the Sandiways…. Shame you didn’t knock, I was there to pick up my hanging baskets and have a brew, would have been lovely to see you!